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Borroughs
Davidson
Beginning July 1, Steed V. Davidson and Bradley B. Burroughs will hold joint appointments on the faculties of Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS); both are founding members of the GTU. Davidson already serves as a professor at PLTS, while Burroughs is new to both seminaries.
Burroughs most recently taught courses in contemporary theology at Duke Divinity School's Course of Study for Ordained Ministry in Durham, North Carolina, where he also served as a writing tutor, both at the divinity school and at the ...

by Stuart J. Moore
The world is literally at our fingertips. Pull out your smart phone <tap tap tap> and you can Google huge libraries of information, see the world thanks to YouTube, and even converse via discussions boards, Facebook, Skype, and text. This ability to access information has revolutionized our culture, particularly how we view education.
Jody Passanisi, a.k.a. Jacqueline Pearce, (M.A. '05) with her colleague Shara Peters astutely observes in a post at Scientific American, “[E]ducated people were those who knew a great deal of information about one or many subjects...In this '...

From the Spring 2018 issue of SKYLIGHTSee a PDF of this articleHow can we transform our pedagogies and draw on religious wisdom to respond to the perils of climate change and climate colonialism?
We live at an unprecedented turning point in history. In light of climate change, humankind hovers on a precipice. On one side is our current path, leading toward almost unimaginable catastrophe in which those least responsible for climate change are most affected by its deadly consequences, and in which the gap between those who have too much and those with not enough continues to widen.
On...

How Seminaries Are Adapting to New Realities
by Stuart J. Moore
The handwriting is on the wall. As Americans distance themselves from the label of Christian, preferring “spiritual” or no affiliation, attendance continues to slip across mainline denominations. Schools for ministerial formation are struggling with lower enrollments and less denominational financial support. The composition of the Christian Church is changing and the seminaries must change with it.
Why does this shift matter to the Graduate Theological Union? Sometimes we focus so much on the academic programs, M.A. and Ph.D...

The GTU, in collaboration with the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study of UC Berkeley, is pleased to announce a three-day long workshop on environmental change and ritualized relationships with the other-than-human world. Jointly funded by REDO, a University of Oslo research network sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council, and co-hosted by UC Berkeley, the workshop explores some of the new ontologies that have been developed in the social sciences over the past two decades, which are revising and revisiting animism, materialism, and religion in new and original ways. As REDO--short for...

PLTS's 2017 Luther Lecture features Dr. Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen of Aarhus University, Denmark
PLTS Chapel of the Cross
Click here for a live video stream of the event.
Schedule
9:00 a.m. – Registration and Refreshments
9:30 a.m. – Lecture with Q&A
11:00 a.m. – Worship with lunch to follow
Advance registration is $20 and appreciated by March 3 so we can plan for lunch.
Dr. Wiberg Pedersen will give the lecture titled “Luther and Women.” From a contextual, hermeneutical, and theological perspective, Dr. Wiberg Pedersen will elucidate this theme that has been at once highly debated...

On May 7, forty-four graduates were honored at the GTU's 2015 commencement ceremony at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary's Chapel of the Cross in Berkeley, California. (See video.) Twenty-four graduates received the Master of Arts degree, three the Master of Arts with a concentration in Biblical Languages, and seventeen the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Each of these students completed their programs in Fall 2014 or Spring 2015.
Sr. Marianne Farsina CSC, Associate Professor of Catholic Theology and Philosophical Ethics at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, spoke on behalf...

California Lutheran University (CLU) has appointed a former director for the Lutheran World Federation to oversee Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS) after it becomes part of the university on Jan. 1.
The Rev. Karen L. Bloomquist of Bellingham, Wash., will start Jan. 6 as the dean and chief administrative officer of PLTS. She will replace Phyllis Anderson, who is retiring as the seminary’s president.
Bloomquist is an alumna of PLTS, having earned a master’s in divinity from the seminary, and the recipient of the 1992 Distinguished Alumna Award. She has a bachelor’s degree in...

An institution of higher learning unlike any other, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley brings together scholars of the world’s diverse religions and wisdom traditions to advance new knowledge, share inspiration, and collaborate on solutions.